Most studies that focus on interpretational bias to date have only focused on children. Interestingly, these studies found a relationship between (hostile attribution bias) and impulsive aggression (Crick & Dodge, 1996; Dodge & Coie, 1987). However, as far as we know only two studies focused on adult students and they failed to find a similar pattern (Helfritz-Sinville & Stanford, 2014; Miller & Lynam, 2006). Both adult studies used vignettes depicting three types of everyday conflict situations (intentional, ambiguous, and unintentional provocation) and asked participants to indicate how certain they were that the events were intentional and hostile. These studies did not observe the direct association between (hostile attribution bias) and
Furthermore, the authors aim to unfold the scientific logic of their analysis of the effects of hidden biases so people will be “better able to achieve the alignment,” between their behavior and intentions (Banaji and Greenwald, 2013) preface
Thought processes can greatly influence people's social interactions, and the way that they live their lives. Cognitions develop how people perceive themselves and others on a daily basis. It is important to investigate how people attribute actions and behaviors exhibited, not only by themselves, but also those around them. These attributions shape the way an observer feels and reacts to others, and how people feel about themselves due to their own actions. The correspondence bias (fundamental attribution error) and the self-serving bias are two errors made in attribution by virtually every human being (Baron & Byrne, 2000). Both of these biases can be shown not only in adults, but also children (Guern, 1999). Even sport spectators display these biases when watching their favorite teams (Wann & Schrader, 2000). When the self-serving bias is absent in people's cognitions, they will show the self-defeating attributions. It is important to study people that demonstrate self-defeating attributions, because these individuals also show symptoms of depression (Wall & Hayes, 2000). Clearly, attributions are an imperative aspect of social cognition. Attributional bias is discussed by Marie Beesley. It is also important to investigate the factors that affect people's judgment biases in decision making and reasoning skills, which is explored by Amanda Wheeler. Because these two processes are so vital to the way in which people perceive themselves and others, and to the way a person chooses to behave, it is important to understand the factors that can cause inaccurate judgments. Judgment biases affect the way people form conclusions and make attributions about others, as well as abou...
Aggression is defined as any behavior intended to harm another person who is motivated to avoid the harm according to Baumeister & Bushman (2014). A study was conducted in 1967 by Leonard Berkowitz and Anthony LePage, to determine whether the presence of weapons would elicit aggressive behavior from an individual (Baumeister & Bushman, 2014). They hypothesized that participants were likely to associate weapons, particularly firearms, to aggression and violence, which would cause observing a weapon to elicit an aggressive response. The experiment determined that the presence of weapon can elicit an aggressive response from people ready to act aggressively. In the study, participants were shocked up to seven times then given the opportunity to
One type of person I have had to deal with recently in my life, is The Hostile.
Since the beginning of social psychology, psychologist has been trying to analyze how people’s thoughts, feelings, and behavior are impacted by aggression. When an aggressive person gets frustrated or upset, social psychologist tracks down what exactly drives them to commit crimes, atrocities, or even abuse. According to Kassin, Fein, and Markus, aggression is “behavior intended to harm another individual” (2016). Individuals who attain this trait don’t always have to physically abuse someone, aggressive attacks could be verbal, emotional, or mental as well. Although many might argue that people who are viewed as aggressive tend to harm another person because that is their only cure, however, there are alternative motives that drive aggression,
It's very hard to keep personal prejudice out of a thing like this. And no matter where you run into it, prejudice obscures the truth.' [Juror 8, page 53] Perhaps this best sums up the basis of Twelve Angry Men' by Reginald Rose. This play is about a young delinquent on trial for the murder of his abusive father. The jury must find him guilty if there is no reasonable doubt, and in turn, sentence him to death. I don't envy your job. You are faced with a grave responsibility.' [Judge, page 1]
Implicit and explicit biases are related mental constructs. For many years, even dating back to our great’s ancestor, people always have automatic judge people, places, and things. We were all given five senses, knowing how the brain works, we choose to use our conscious actions to judge. Without awareness, we usually act on those judgments. There are two types of judgments consciously and unconsciously.
Personal bias constantly influences one’s rational judgement. People use their personal experience to convince themselves that what type of person one should be, which is not a fair judgement about individual guilty.
Implicit bias has negatively impacted our society, whether we realize it or not. Efren Perez(2016), a professor at Vanderbilt University, defines implicit bias as “an umbrella term for a variety of attitudes, beliefs, knowledge and stereotypes that we all carry to some degree. They tend to be automatically triggered, hard to control and can often influence what we say and do without our awareness” (para. 3). This has a negative impact on society because it can influence our viewpoints on important issues such as immigration, politics, and civil rights no matter how unbiased we think we are. Pérez(2016) explains “our mind picks up on patterns that we see in society, the media and other places and forms snap judgments before we have time to process all the information in a more deliberative and controlled manner” (para. 4). While we may not always view ourselves as prejudice or racist, implicit bias lies beneath the surface of our conscious and affects how we make
Experiencing incivility in today’s society is a relatively common occurrence. When faced with it, most people tend to try to just shrug it off, not taking too much offense to it, and definitely not confronting the problem. Although this may not seem like too much of an issue, studies have shown that incivility causes a variety of individual, social, and organizational problems.
Attribution theory correlates with how people exemplify events and how it affects their behavior and thinking. People making casual explanations is known as attribution theory. It was established over time from different social psychologists, especially Fritz Heider who played a major role in producing the theory in 1958. Heider wrote about attribution theory in his book called The Psychology of Interpersonal Relationships. External attribution is when behavior is altered by influences outside of your control. Internal attribution is caused from an inside factor that falls within your control. Your behavior is not influenced and you feel responsible.
The Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE) is a concept within social psychology that assumes when someone is aggressive, it is due to a flaw in their personality as opposed to a reaction to their personal circumstances (Aronson, Wilson & Akert, 2015). However, there is typically a situational reason for the other person’s behavior that is not taken into account through the FAE (Aronson, Wilson & Akert, 2015). I have been guilty of making the FAE myself; for example, I can think of two situations where my frustration led me to believe that there were flaws in my antagonists’ characters. Recently, my mother wanted me to assist my brother in scheduling classes for the semester. Since I was annoyed that my mother was insisting that I assist him when
The first theory is the fundamental attribution error. This theory argues that people tend over estimate the role of dispositional factors and underestimate the situational factors. Psychologists argue that this is such a common error because humans tend to think of themselves as flexible, and ever changing. People do not like to think of themselves as a “type” of person. When a person does not have enough information to make a balanced decision they attribute behavior to disposition. In Western culture placing the blame on the individual is a common practice. An important study to investigate fundamental attribution is Lee et al. (1977). The aim of his experiment was to see if students would make the fundamental attribution error even when they knew that all the actors were just playing a role. In the study, Lee assigned students a role. They were assigned as either a game s...
We make inferences about the actions of people that we do not make about inanimate objects. People have beliefs, motives, or intentions. Attribution theory suggests that when we observe an individual's behavior, we attempt to determine whether it was internally or externally caused. That determination depends largely on three factors:
Children who see violence being used against them will go on to use violence with others. When a child is hit by someone they love, who they expect to care for them and protect them, it can confuse them immensely. Constant exposure to this confusion can cause them to start expecting hostility from everyone around them and leads to a rise in anti-social behaviour. This is known as ‘hostile attribution bias’. When interviewing parents it was found that aggression in children was the most likely behaviour to lead to smacking. There was a clear link found between an increase in smacking and an increase in aggression. Some have claimed that this is because children with worse behaviour tend to be smacked more often but this was not found to be the